No Write Way to Die

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Description

 This debut thriller  from award-winning journalist Neal Lipschutz, former deputy editor in chief of the Wall Street Journal, combines a gripping, good old-fashioned murder mystery with the ethical consideration of just how far a person should go to protect their family.

In this debut thriller from award-winning journalist Neal Lipschutz, former deputy editor-in-chief of The Wall Street Journal, Scott Morgan's carefully crafted life---one he had worked hard to insulate from the sort of tumult he had experienced growing up---is upended when a murder victim is found in his daughter's Manhattan apartment. Scott and his loved ones become prime suspects. Morgan had lifted himself out of his old Brooklyn neighborhood into a successful career as a respected management consultant. A sign of his progress: his current address is an expensive home in the affluent suburb of Scarsdale, New York. When his twenty-eight-year-old daughter brings home a new beau---a fifty-five-year-old one hit wonder of a novelist---Scott suspects the writer is a serial user of people and sets out to expose him.

Murder, however, applies a screeching halt to Scott's investigation, as he, his wife, and daughter become suspects. His quest to forestall catastrophe means facing submerged demons from his Brooklyn past and matching wits with a clever and idiosyncratic NYPD detective. Scott's tool kit consists of the take-no-prisoners lessons he's gleaned from an ethics-free approach to business. How far will Scott go to protect everything he's worked for?

Reviews

Who slew the sleazy boyfriend?

A brief prologue finds NYPD Det. Delmore Kerbich asking Scarsdale businessman Scott Morgan, “Did you commit the murder?” before flashing back to the fateful day when Morgan and his wife, Meredith, first meet their daughter Sarah’s boyfriend, Ed Blaus, a charming novelist who’s but three years younger than Morgan himself. Scarcely has Morgan begun his obsessive probe into Blaus’ past than Sarah announces that she and Blaus are moving in together. Morgan hires an investigator named Mickey Genz to gather information about Blaus but soon regrets it, deciding that the man is a grifter. As Blaus undertakes a charm offensive with Morgan and especially Meredith, more unsavory details of his life come to light. There’s his ex-wife, Mary, and Justin Skilbahl, an adult son he’s cut out of his life, along with Justin’s mother, Emily. Most heinous of all, Blaus has abandoned Michael, his special needs brother, and cheated him out of an inheritance due to him on the death of their mother. Michael currently lives in a group home, mentored by fierce protector JoAnne Pesto. Not until the midpoint, after Sarah discovers Blaus’ corpse, does the tale return to the opening scene. Whodunit? Complications ensue on the march to a solution. Lipschutz’s sleek debut wraps its clever puzzle in an authentic portrait of the Big Apple and the varied lifestyles of its residents.

A tidy whodunit with a New York state of mind.

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